Myriad: Why do people keep insisting things that are not true? Jackie did NOT christen her husband's presidency as Camelot. She mentioned to the press (the media) that he liked the song from Camelot (the title song) and that's how the whole "Camelot" thing was started.

Kennedy - because he was assassinated and at a young age - has become some sort of mythical figure in the collective memory of the American public. The man was about as far from being a mythical figure in real life as one can get, as you briefly mentioned. He has been idolized, mythologized, and placed up some sort of pedestal since that day in Dallas (that is now lost in the mists of time where it should be left). He was not like a knight in shining armor. More like a dirt bag hiding behind the cloak of the presidency. The whole Kennedy clan can go jump in the river as far as I'm concerned.

I love the fact that Betty is Don this season and Don is Betty. It was great seeing Don go through what Betty went through. HAHAHA! Don you are still a loser.

Fivemiles, it's all in how you take it and how you read it. I spoke metaphorically in saying Jackie "christened" it Camelot. When ones christens a ship they don't take credit for building it.

Quote from Life Magazine:
"In an interview with Life magazine a few days after her husband’s assassination, Jackie Kennedy confessed that "I’m so ashamed of myself--all I keep thinking of is this line from a musical comedy." At night they would listen to the musical on their record player before they went to sleep, and JFK’s favorite song came at the very end of the recording. According to Jackie, President Kennedy had been enamored with the Knights of the Round Table from early childhood, and he held to an idealistic view of history replete with heroes. Linking JFK with Camelot, Jackie Kennedy remarked that "There’ll be great presidents again… but there’ll never be another Camelot."

To me, that last line qualifies, metaphorically, as Jackie "christening" her husband's term as "Camelot." If you don't take it that way, so be it. I agree that the florid media ran with it in a fever.

As far as JFK and the Kennedys, at times I have admired them and at times I have despised them. Like everyone else on this earth they are human and as such do both good and bad. Sad but true, I gave up on finding a hero ... or a saint, long ago.

Loves Mad Men: LOL, true. All I could think tonight was something I have said often... men never start trying to save a marriage until it's over.

I just think if Betty is with Henry she will be more than just a trophy wife ... she will be a politician's wife but will he be able to marry a divorced woman and stay in office back in the 60s?

CadMen -
A better question is if Henry Francis is Catholic. Hofstadt - German (even if she did say Nordic) could go either way. In 1963 if he was Catholic (divorced or widowed, we don't know), I don't know if a priest would have married him to a divorced woman..

OMG Myriad - what you said is SO TRUE - "Men never start trying to save a marriage until it's over." Having been divorced 2X, I have experienced this phenomenon in my life - 2X.
Let's see a show of hands -- everyone who felt sorry for Don, raise your hands. **SILENCE** thought so.
Isn't it interesting Betty cried for JFK's death but not her father's.
This was a very "dark" epsidoe on so many levels, including Jane's black dress for the wedding. I can't say I liked this episode because I did not enjoy re-visiting that "dark" day in 1963. I still remember it vividly.

As much as I would like to see Betty pack up and move out, I just don't see her doing that. I grasped the whole Betty is Don and Don is Betty...though for a loner like Don, who was never sure he wanted to be tied down by a family that he had, I am not sure why this is so deeply affecting him. I pictured Don as someone who neeeded the family for his business image but didn't want to let go of the tempestous, living on the edge-side of his nature. For him to be suddenly concerned about losing his family can only mean that it would not be a personal loss, one that has depth and meaning but as a possession that must be kept-as in a competition.
How else can he look down his nose at Roger?

I still think Don is more sorry that he got caught in his lies than the deception itself.

And Betty who has been unsettled by the loss of her father, the lies around the drawer and now the violent deaths she has witnessed...may see older man Francis as the security she craves but really isn't she too emotionally withdrawn to appreciate Francis or partake of the golden fruit? She may continue to punish herself by not reaching for the thing she desires the most. I think Betty has an eating disorder and this signals the low self esteem and clamoring for control of/in her life.

I'd like to see Betty unleashed by a wiser more mature man but we already have Peg who is looking for a father substitute...No?

I loved this episode and it's complexities....even if the there was a lot of stock footage. I think that we need so see what we did so that we can fully appreciate how it affects the characters...I don't think that era was as cold as back to business as usual...

9/11 affected us deeply and differently...I can't watch any more of it. I can't bear to watch another conspiracy theory debunked or documentary or film clip. Since I was only 4 yrs when the assassination took place, I am not reliving it as a lot of watchers are.

@chickie: As I child I observed the reactions of the adults at the time. That was the first time I saw men cry. They cried right on TV. That was shocking to me because men always had a "stiff upper lip" back then and to see a man cry was highly unusual. They just didn't do it. Also, the blanket of grief that covered the world. The whole world was crying and then it was Oswald's death, King's death, Bobby's death. I remember people being shot all the time and seeing all this on TB. America was a safe happy place back then and all of this started happening.

Myriad: I know, many here always speaks "metaphorically" when someone here disagrees with them or tells them they don't quite have all the facts straight. It was like the "Jon-Jon" thing. No one in the Kennedy family ever called John Jr. "Jon-Jon." That was some photographer who was taking photos at the time and Caroline came into the Oval Office and shouted "John! John!" because her brother was not paying attention to the photographer. The photographer coined the "Jon-Jon" nonsense and claimed that's what the family called him privately. They didn't. I am not speaking metaphorically or any other "phorically." Fact is fact. I wish people would STOP trying to re-write history the way they want to believe it. THe myth of the Kennedy's is a pain in the butt. There was no myth. They are who they are and I am glad there isn't one of them in the White House today.

@Fivemilestomidnight. Respectfully, I do not think you allow for the fact that other people feel differently. We do not all feel, think or process events the same. I also think you respond with anger and disrespect to anyone who sees it differently from you.

Frankly, I don't give a damn about the Kennedys. They were human, as I already said. I do give a damn about the President of the United States, whoever that person may be, Democrat, Republican, whatever race, gender or sexual orientation and whether I voted for them or not. When an American president's head is partially blown off it IS important. It will be remembered and dissected forever. It will be an indelible part of the memory of any American alive at the time. An attack on an American president is an attack on each of us personally.

Yes, people went on living that week, doing the same things. I remember our family going downtown that day for a doctor's appointment and my mom running out of the car at a stoplight to buy a special edition of the newspaper from a street vendor.

I do think Ep 12 may have overdone it somewhat in the way some characters responded. I don't think so many guests would have been no-shows at the wedding. Actually, I think most people would have shown up because most people take comfort in associating with others in a crisis like that. They would have wanted to talk with each other about the events and been with their own "set" as Trudy calls it. I was put off by Pete and Trudy caring that much. They both seem too shallow to care. I think their reaction was far more related to Pete's demotion.

Oddly, the truest note I felt in Ep 12 was the vile Duck saying "I have to call my kids" when he heard the president was dead.

Myraid: Then you should take a reading lesson. No one is angry at you, least of all me. If that is what you feel, then I am sorry you do, but where you got that impression I don't know. I have been over on the main thread and no one seems out of sorts there by anything I have posted. Perhaps you are feeling persecuted and if so, please don't blame me because I disagreed with you. And with that, I am finished addressing you for fear you will take things even further and twist them around making them appear I am out to lambaste you or something. Again, not true. Please chill. Thanks a lot.

@fivemilestomidnight Take a lesson of your own. If you are perceived as rude, you are.

In regards to Kennedy's assassination, I think the key point was Trudy saying, "Who cares what your politics are--he was the president!" This is very important in getting the flavor of that moment, and understanding the horror everyone seemed to feel, the tears they shed, whether they liked Kennedy as a person or not, whether they voted for him or not--or would have voted for him in '64.

Kennedy's murder was a shock to everyone not because everyone loved him or mythologized him, but because of what that assassination represented--not death, assassination. You don't shoot presidents, you vote them out. If you shoot them, then you undermine the biggest and most important belief Americans have about themselves and about America especially at that time--that we uphold democracy at any cost.

That is what gets shot to hell by Kennedy's assassination, that belief, that mythology about ourselves.

America at that time had a high opinion of itself personally and in regards to it's place as the world's leader--we've been seeing that over and over again this season. Many Americans might not have viewed Kennedy as King Arthur, but I'm sure they all liked to view the U.S. as Camelot, a land of justice, equality, and knights riding in to save the rest of the world from the evils of communism, etc.

This, however, was not a realistic view as we know from the civil rights movement if nothing else.

What happened when Kennedy was shot was that we woke up/took our first step to growing up. America may have wanted to believe it was King Arthur or Camelot-fighting for the right--but in many cases, we were far, far away from that glorious ideal. And what moments like this do is make people see what they don't want to see.

Which is exactly what happens with Betty and Don. The assassination wakes Betty ups, makes her realize she doesn't love Don, and that, as he's told her, it's all been a lie--a mythology, a dream. This episode showing people crying and grieving over the loss of "Camelot" isn't about how people mourn (mourned) a mythological president, it's about how they mourn the death of their own mythology.